The MawHot

Details

Play The Maw to experience Frank’s adventures on an alien world. Discover the mysteries of Maw’s abilities as you try to survive and ultimately make your way back home! Included in the full version is a special unlockable theme and gamer pictures – can you find the secret that holds them?

Features

The pinnacle of alien evolution, Maw is a cowardly fat blob concerned mostly with snacking and lounging. He can, however, absorb the traits of anything he eats, is virtually indestructible, and can grow to unlimited size. If he wasn't a danger to all life in the universe, he'd make the perfect pet. In the action/adventure game The Maw, he's the best friend of our hero Frank, and only by working together, can Maw help eat their way to freedom. The Maw was honored with the Audience Choice Award in the 2008 PAX-10 showcase of independent games, and is a finalist at the 2009 Independent Games Festival for Technical Excellence.

The power of The Maw: Feed Maw a variety of different creatures and make him grow to help get through levels. Use Frank's plasma leash to control the indestructible Maw, as he grows, evolves, and gains new powers that can be used to get rid of enemies and solve level puzzles.

The teamwork of Frank and Maw: Frank and Maw must help each other to solve puzzles and get through each area. Frank's plasma leash can be attached to Maw as well as creatures and other objects to slam and toss things around.

Action and adventure: This single-player story-driven game features eight full levels with different puzzles and power creatures throughout.

Musical score: The original music score was created by God of War composer Winifred Phillips.

User reviews

Average user rating from: 15 user(s)

Overall Fun Level

7.3 (15)

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Ratings (the higher the better)

Overall Fun Level*

How fun is this game to play. Taking into consideration the graphics, sound, controls, achievements, price, etc. please score this game with 10 being Perfect and 1 being Terrible.

A very decent platformer for kids and adults.

I would give this a 7.5 if I could ^^

Also please remember that I got this game for free with a microsoft promotion.

First of all being an old XBLA game it was one of the first to really push the envelope of graphics. Now there are plenty more games that look very nice, but back when this came out I was very surprised.

The gameplay is simple yet creative. A little bit on the repetitive side and the game is over just as you see the potential of it. I really like the ending and the interaction between the two main characters.

The Maw is great. It has tons of personality which is really helped by the excellent production values. It's engaging from start to finish and one of the better original titles on XBLA.

The presentation in this game are excellent for an XBLA title. The color palette is cheerful and the animations and sounds sell the characters. You don't see many games with this much personality. It's easy to see the same company released this and Splosion Man.

The gameplay revolves around leading your creature with an appetite for anything and everything around levels, consuming more and more to grow bigger and bigger until you've reached a size where you can move on. The levels are varied in that the creatures you can consume give your creature different powers, giving way to different attacks and tactics to get through.

I only have two real gripes with the game. One, it's too easy. It opens up the game for anyone to enjoy, but if you've been platforming for 20 years like I have, it can feel like there isn't a lot of challenge. The other complaint is the game is a bit short. There are collectibles to extend the game life a bit, and optional paid DLC (which I have not bought, and cannot review). Luckily at only $10, and with such great production values, it's still a good value.

I recommend The Maw to anyone who wants a fun, quirky, different kind of platformer. Just don't expect a big challenge.

Good title, a rare platformer on XBLA

I guess I had a better experience with this title than the other reviewers. It looks great, it sounds great and the characters are endearing. Sure, the Maw itself is similar to Nibbler (and overall less charismatic haha), but that's easy to get past.

I had a lot of fun running through this title and collecting the obscure squishy bugs. The puzzles aren't terribly difficult, but I do enjoy that they're generally devoid of "game logic". It makes sense that burning something would allow you to move forward, etc.

XBLA is severely lacking in the platforming department and I feel that the Maw is a good way to make up for that. The add-on stages are very inexpensive, which is always a plus.

enjoyable romp featuring loveable characters

Live Arcade isn't exactly hurting for good 3D adventures, with Portal and Banjo-Kazooie available. But this one helps fill that niche some more with a style all its own.

I really enjoyed this game a lot, and it compelled me to come back and try to improve my speed ratings. The game is a bit short, but the inexpensive download stages help with that a little. I think this game does a whole lot of things right, especially the nonverbal interactions between the protagonists.

Too Repetitive

The Maw is a very fun and unique game. You play as a little alien who is able to control the maw. The maw eats just about anything in site and can even transform into cretin creatures it eats in order to solve puzzles to pass a level. My big problem with the maw was it got too repetitive really quick. Because of this, I think the small amount of time to beat this game (around 4-5 hours) was just enough of The Maw I could take. Because of this, I'm not very interested in the lost level dlc.

Almost my bay

I enjoyed The Maw. The characters look great, with a Simpsons type twist to their design (I could totally see Maw in a Simpsons Halloween episode).

As a platformer, there isn't a whole lot of puzzle solving, and the "platforming" segments are not very demanding.

The game is quite short (unfortunately The Maw was one of the victims of Microsoft's now defunct 150MB limit for XBLA games), although Twisted Pixel is realeasing new, more complex "Deleted Scene" levels at a very affordable 100pts each.

There is no health bar or lives to be lost in the game, and I feel that removes a certain aspect of challenge and intensity.

Overall I think this is a great first entry for Twisted Pixel. I look forward to seeing what they do with their recently announced "'Splosion Man"

Not my bag

The graphics and presentation are nice, but this quickly reveals itself as a sub-mediocre adventuring platformer with uninteresting characters. Unless you think the big-mouthed sidekick who eats everything (a la Nibbler from Futurama from 2000, bit of an old joke isn't it people?) is endlessly entertaining, skip this one. And as a side complaint, why does the main character have to be such a cross-eyed pseudo-manga robot kitty? Blah.